Blog Archive

Tunnel vision

Alex Instrell

Senior Consultant

In this three part blog, I argue that risks to benefits realisation from outside the direct scope of the programme have particular importance for many large, long-term initiatives, and yet may be under prioritised. The Channel Tunnel, which opened in 1994, failed to ever get close to averaging 20 million travellers a year as it had projected. Even before the first train had passed through the tunnel, EU aviation regulations had been revised to allow easier access to European airspace, triggering a boom in low-cost airlines and drawing customers away in droves.

Systems Engineering and Project Management: a personal recollection

Ivor Bennett

Capability Director

It became clear to me when I joined BMT in late 1991 and began working initially as a Combat Systems Design Engineer, and subsequently as a Risk Manager, that the underlying reasons for our Front-line problems were far more complex and ill-defined than I had appreciated. However, I was determined to apply my engineering common-sense to these problems and in the early days of Risk Management, working on the Future Frigate programme with a number of like-minded engineers and non-engineers, we created an approach which became in many ways the basis for the discipline across Defence.